The True Causes of the Video Game Crash of 1983: Had Nothing to Do with E.T. |Retro Game Living Room
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ก.ย. 2024
- The North American Video Game Crash of 1983 was a unique and complex event. Too often the entire episode in gaming history is blamed on E.T. and Pac-Man. It's also been said that too many bad games or too many developers caused the crash. Or even that it was the fault of the home computer market. None of those are true, and in this video those myths and others will be dispelled as we discuss the true causes of the crash.
Finally someone who also understands that 2 games did not cause the crash. Thank you.
We also need to understand that these bad games and failing company ideas left people with bad opinions of video games the crash was not just business failure it was a social issue Nintendo solved
If that were the case then the bad NES games by LJN would have caused another video game crash XD.
I personally reviewed both 2600 Pac-Man and E.T. for defunctgames.com , having grown up with them. I can say, for the record, that both games are very flawed and not worth loading up now, but their reputations are worse than the games themselves.
I've heard of Defunct Games. Never was a fan of that website to be honest.
Pac-Man for the Atari I think is playable because the core gameplay is still there and it controls fine. E.T was a game I was confused with at first but i read the instructions and started enjoying it. Same thing with Raiders Of The Lost Ark, confused first, manual second, enjoyed it last.
Only 2 games cause the whole industry crash? LoL!
Speaking of bad games, you know those infamous pornographic games on the system? Games like Custer's Revenge sometimes get blamed for playing a part in the video game crash. A small part of it is true as Custer's Revenge did stir up controversy from parents who saw their kids play the game when it first came out. With that said, a big part of it is false for a couple of reasons.
The first reason is that Custer's Revenge alongside other pornographic games were released in special cases that hid the cover art of the game so that kids wouldn't see it. Secondly, they weren't on shelves as you had to ask one of the staff members to buy the game which made it easier to prevent kids from playing it (the manual for Custer's Revenge even said if a kid spots you playing it, just say they're dancing which is kind of hilarious in hindsight).
One interesting part is that although Atari did sue the company that made these games, they weren't sued because of the controversy, they were sued because they were making games on the system without their legal permission (I did read that was the reason somewhere, I just can't remember where). I'm guessing much like Activision, when Atari heard about the controversy, they found out what the company Mystique was doing and they tried to stop them from making games without their permission. It's an interesting read.
IMHO Atari's E.T. was more or less similar in concept to other 2600 games like Superman and Adventure. And therefore had a very specific audience that enjoyed it, as a lot of people (read kids) preferred more action packed titles. I remember my grandfather absolutely loving both E.T. and Adventure and playing them at least once a day for months on end.
I also remember the decline of video arcades. In the early 80's, there was always a video arcade within walking distance in any suburban area. The problem was, these arcades caused the increase in the areas' crime rate whether it be vandalism, thefts, or drug dealing. Communities would often band together and have their local arcade shut down. By the mid 80's, the only place you'd find a video arcade would be in the shopping malls as mall security would keep arcade patrons in check.
Vic-20 didn't fail. It managed to sell a million units in just over a year. It was Commodore releasing the C-64 just over a year later, that made the Vic-20 obsolete.
It is absolutely criminal, that this video doesn't even have 100K views, no other video on this topic does as comprehensive of a job of debunking the myths associated with the 1983 Crash.
Sure, some videos debunk some of the myths individually, but not like in this one.
Not even the Gaming Historian's 2009 video on the Crash does do a good enough of a job of debunking almost all of these misconceptions. That video is 10 years old and is definitely in need of a remake.
Another thing this video sheds light on is the fact, that Nintendo is not entirely deserving of the title of "The Saviour of Video Games", they just happened to be the ones to release a new console, to end the Crash, when e.g. Atari could have done so.
Also, not that this is something really discussed in this video, but it should be clear to everyone, that the "Nintendo Seal of Quality" system obviously did not improve the general quality of video games, but instead was just a measure for Nintendo to have control over their platform. I think Nintendo obviously likes for everyone to think, that quality reasons are why it is there, but the reality of it says otherwise. Obviously even from a business standpoint it makes sense, but it is also obvious the existence of the Seal of Quality is not entirely a pro-consumer move.
Nintendo more than any console maker throughout history, are the most consistent control freaks, especially when it comes to the design of their consoles and certain policies.
IMHO the video game crash was caused by an aging 2600 Atari..heck, my friends and I were playing the 2600 in late 79 and even then most games were pretty awful, I remember taking games back to Woolco and the old man there being nice enough to let us trade for another game. We did this several times but I think we always went back to playing Battlezone, which had secret walls you could travel through. A 5200 model was badly needed around 1980 if you ask me. I guess we were early adopters, we stopped playing 2600 in 1980 and just stuck with superior arcade games until NES and Sega came around. I was ALWAYS shocked I had friends who played 2600(Pitfall anyone?) in 1982, it was so passe' to me by then.
Definitely the 2600 needed to have been refreshed in 1980 or 81.
There was no crash. There was a shift in video gaming from consoles to personal computers like the Commodore 64. The Nintendo/Famicom was released in 1983 but specifically redesigned and released in North America to not resemble a toy for a reason.
Nintendo implemented a lockout chip on their NES, but the seal of quality crap came along after Atari's Tengen reverse engineered the chip and was able to make cartridges without Nintendo. The reason they did it was due to Nintendo artificially creating shortages of games to keep prices high and games made under the Tengen name while they were popular wasn't making enough money from license fees because not enough copies were being made.
Yeah, the "Seal of Quality" was nothing more than a way to control who made games for them, and how many games they could make.
ET is actually a good game that nobody knew how to play. If you don't read the instruction book then sure the game sucks. Apparently n00bs get to decide whether or not a game sucks.
Phil V That's what i thought, don't get me wrong, i never played it, i was born 11 years after it was realed, but compared to all other atari games, ET felt to me like really advanced game for the time in any review i saw it.
+Phil V I played it in 1987. It was designed and programmed in just 5 weeks. "Nuff said.
Tornado 1994...That just shows how awesome the programmer was that he was able to make this kick ass top ten atari 2600 game of all time in just five weeks. Unfortunately people that are too stupid or lazy to read the rule book get to decide if a cool game sucks because they don't know how to play.
When you played it in 1987 did you know how to play? Did you know the objective of the game and how to win? Or did you just run around like an idiot not knowing wtf is going on and falling into holes?
If that is the case, the game doesn't suck, YOU SUCK.
NOOB
Phil V It was a confusing and convoluted mess of a platformer. In 2003 when I played it again as an adult, my opinion didn't change.
I disagree that it was a good game. It's OK at best, but not the worst. Fuck no, shit like Hydlide, Bill and Ted Excellent (more like SHITTY) Video Game Adventure, Uncanny X-Men (NES game) are way fucking worse.
Born in 1975, I actually remember most of these events and have even played many of even the more obscure consoles and games of this era. Looking back with more mature, adult eyes and your wonderful analysis, it all makes total sense in combination with my experience. The retail model was definitely not in the console and software makers' best interest. And while the lack of any sort of quality control for third party software (like what Nintendo would soon introduce) was starting to hurt the quality of gaming at the time, having no licensing system (as Nintendo would also soon introduce) was a real financial detriment as well. The gaming industry was still young. The teething problems were many. As a new business, many mistakes were made by many parties. It wasn't any one person or company's fault. It was all learning processes by everyone at the time. And well...the mistakes all piled up like million or so "returned" E.T. cartridges. I'm thankful that Nintendo had the vision and the savvy to learn from what happened and resurrect what was almost a dead industry and for your compelling video on this topic. Brilliantly done, sir! And thank you for getting real information out there! Keep up your great work! Cheers!
Psyberius In fact Atari included a digital lockout on all Atari 7800 games. In order to use the 7800 for 7800 games the third party publisher had to get a digital signature from Atari.
AandNvg 7800 didn't see a full release until 1986. OP is talking about the 2600.
There's a lot of great insight in this video, but I have to disagree with the Vic-20 being a crash and burn computer. The Vic-20 sold over a million units, and was the 1st home computer to achieve such a feat,, but it was quickly overshadowed by Commodore's own C-64. The Vic-20 never had a chance to become more successful.
was a great starting puter but the C64 really stole its legacy fast :)
Great mini-doc. I lived through the period, and you nailed it. Nice work.
I was a gamer during the crash in 83. There's a number of things that you got wrong or blew off. One was that you were incorrect regarding the computers being more expensive. Just like consoles were going through a war, computers were going through their own war and the prices had dropped heavily to the point of costing close to the same amount as a console. Due to this people gravitated to them more. Many also did go back to arcade games, many of these arcades survived well into the mid-late 90s but most did die out around the time of the SNES or NeoGeo. For myself and many of the kids that grew up around me in West Los Angeles we hung out at one bowling alley after school just to play the arcade games even though I had an Atari.
Your video is very interesting but i have a few points to make:
- retailers would not order so many games if they werent selling and they would not have to return so many copies with they didnt have stopped selling on previous levels
- you make it sound like if any company had released a third generation console, that would have changed everything, but what nintendo did was not just to release a more advanced piece of hardware, they had to reinvent games through some revolutionary products like mario and zelda; if other companies had released third generation consoles, they would probably just release more of the same games with better visuals
-third and more importantly...all these issues would be circunvented if the industry still showed potential to be lucrative; what happened is that nobody saw how to keep producing more compeling games, until someone showed the, what was possible; thats the creative leap realized by nintendo, i think
Thanks for your comments. I'll be happy to address your points.
1. Retailers were responding to market projections. They were expecting to sell that many games. However, the transition from 2nd gen to third wave consoles affected 2600 and Intellivision in ways that the market didn't expect. The next time the industry would see such a big downturn in a transition period would be in 2000 where sales were down 20 percent over the previous year.
2. I am not saying that if a 3rd gen console were released in 1984 that it would've changed the course of history, but it could have. 7800 was ready to go and close enough to being as powerful as NES. Games were already moving into modern platforming, with arcade manufactures, Activision, and Imagic leading the way. In fact, ColecoVision's biggest hit was a Nintendo game, and many of the early NES games were 80s style arcade games.
3. I think this is where Nintendo had an advantage over U.S. hardware companies. There was no crash in Japan, so they knew the market was ripe. NES had been available since 1983.
When all those games went on sale for 5 bucks apiece in the bargain bins at mall stores back then, My brother and I were in hog heaven.
Thanks for busting the cherry of this myth
Excellent work! Quite accurate (I was 11 at the time and remember "the crash" fairly well), and you have a good knowledge of gaming history in all eras. I really hope you make more gaming history videos!
VALIS You didn't notice it until Spring '84 right? I don't think any retailers or gamers realized something was wrong until after the 1983 Holiday season.
I knew something was bad wrong when you could buy an Atari 2600 game at a drug store for less than $5. They were all piled up in bins. Needless to say I had a field day back then.
After the Colecovision and the 8 bit computers had their run, we were all getting older and interested in cars and women. That’s what killed the video game industry.
Good video but everyone is missing the main point on why it really happened which is the steel mill industry. At the time, the steel industry closed and the north became the "Rust Belt." People went from $60-80,000/yr jobs to nothing! Worse, the Reagan administration slashed UE and state benefits! People had car/house payments, little income, and were concerned about eating every month over getting video games! Cities and retail literally dried up! When the NES came out, jobs were recovering somewhat. Source...I was there.
Interesting extra info you added - not just Steel, though (which hit part of the country) more likely - the economy in general was part of why we had the Retail Glut? Honestly don't know, but this video leads to the inevitable question of why / how Retail Glut happened, and didn't happen before or after in the same way.
At what point did it become commonplace for retailers to keep the extra stock rather than return to the publisher? Do we still see that today, or is the lack of such an agreement with Nintendo and other companies that would push into this space what caused the ever growing market of "bargain bins" for games?
That business decision heavily favoring the retailers (in a short-term fashion, anyway) would never happen on a new business today, but I do wonder when it started.
I have read so many books and watched so many videos about this topic, but your video has been one of the most interesting. It goes against what so many other books and videos claim to be the reasons for the crash, but your video makes a lot more sense than theirs. While I agree if any one of those companies had released a third generation console the market would have rebounded, I guess after seeing how much money they were losing, they chose to abandon the medium. Either way, Nintendo proved your point with the NES. Thanks again for making this video!
Thank you. Since I made the video the documentary "Atari: Game Over" has been released, and it's amazing and fantastic. It sheds a little more light on the crash than I did here. It goes into more depth on E.T. obviously, but to me the interesting part is it has the then CEO of Warner talking about how incompetent the leadership within Atari was. I highly recommend it.
This video deserves more attention. I always thought it was because of lack of innovation.
This video desereves a million views,or more.
The truth is important and this video debunks all the tired trite reasons so many other videos parrot about this momentous moment in history, thank you..
Most people did not love the 2600 pacman, we simply played it because their was no real other options.
In my country, The Netherlands, Philips briefly had a awful looking PacMan-clone on their console, but I remember that Philips (who I believe produced their games themselves) was sued over it for copyright infringement and had to stop selling the game. I don't know for sure if I remember all of the details correctly, since it happened such a long time ago, but I'm quite confident that it is accurate.
I loved PacMan on the Atari 2600, not just because it was PacMan, but also because Philip's version of the game looked so bad, which for me as a Dutch kid was very disappointing, because I couldn't understand why a famous Dutch company like Philips was unable to build a successful game-console that looked just as cool as the Atari 2600.
By the way, I remember that when Atari went down in the 1980s, it was rumoured and expected that Philips would buy Atari. It didn't happen though.
@@j.vonhogen9650 Was this game called "K.C. Munchkin"? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K.C._Munchkin!
Very very well done and deep analysis
I agree that there was no one thing that caused the crash. Yes, retail glut is the final stopping point as consumers would eventually decide with their wallets how long the current systems of that era lasted. As a guy who turned 13 in 1980 when I got my Intellivision and lived through the rise and fall of that generation, my opinion is that it was a combination of all the things you mentioned here. When Intellivision came out, obviously Atari had a huge head start on games, and when I played 2600 games at friends houses they were good games too. But Intellivision games were better and most of the new releases that we could play were good. But then 2 years go by and the games that were coming out were just not that good. Mostly just variations of existing games, and the hardware was the same. The publishers rushed games to market (ET was done - start to finish- in what, 6 weeks when an average game usually took 6 months or more) because their corporate owners loved all the $$$ that was rolling in from the past 2 years and they had shareholders to think about. Consumers were looking for something better, but the publishers could not outrun the old hardware. We all heard the rumors back then of next gen systems that would rival the arcades. And when I first saw Donkey Kong on Colecovision I was blown away by the graphics and gameplay. Pretty damn close to the arcade compared to Mattel or Atari or anything else. I really thought that was it, I was gonna get a Colecovision with the ADAM attached and the 2600 and Intellivision were dead. But because of all the companies losing money and closing shop (like Coleco), we never got to find out. And I think Nintendo took off in 1985 with the NES because enough time had passed and Nintendo was not a name anyone in the US had heard of at that point. Timing was part of it, but when I said we were all looking for something better, this was it. It's hard to imagine now, but the NES was the first system that I played that had a D-pad controller with 2 buttons. Sure, you could buy aftermarket controllers for the 2600 but they weren't great and the first gen Intellivision controllers were odd (I can't force myself to say terrible only because of the sheer amount of hours I played on that system) and they were hardwired to the console. Playing the games was easier and better on the NES, and most kids in 1985 also got Duck Hunt. The game used an actual prop gun you fired at the screen! I know that sounds quaint now, but back then it was a remarkable achievement to have that on a home system. The games were better because Nintendo controlled the market, and after that the console wars truly started.
But back to the crash... Mainly caused by profit driven companies that tried to exploit a market that was oversaturated- with publishers that were making too many crappy games to make a buck on systems that by that point had maxed out their potential. The vibe on the street was not very good. The burgeoning PC market was just starting to get serious in the early 80's, but not quite ready to replace consoles, but we could tell that computers were only gonna get better and better from there. Maybe the crash wouldn't have happened or been as bad if Jack Tramiel hadn't been so gung ho on the PC and let Atari push forward full steam ahead with the 7800. I would have liked to find out.
I remember when our parents decided to get a 2g console, and my father made a trip with me & my brother to the local Sears. We saw kiosks for the Atari 2600 & Odyssey-2, respectfully, but weren't impressed enough by either to decide between the two.
Then we saw the Intellivision... and were thoroughly impressed!
Until the day the Commodore-64 debut, we never regretted our decision. But that was a long-time later...! ;)
The Intellivision is awesome. Quite a lot of good games.
Unsold ET carts were put in a landfill. How many other carts saw the same fate?
+Bryon Lape Check out the documentary "Atari: Game Over" for the true story of the landfill. All Atari did was dump the stock contained at one of its warehouses when it closed it down.
+JaxDeGamer I felt the same way
this is the BEST video on the video game crash..totally 100 percent true on all accounts..great job
+Mazerati The Crash was not felt until the Spring of 1984. Retailers in 1983 STILL carried and sold video games.
By June 1984, Retailers wanted absolutely NOTHING to do with them.
It is not true that only through 90s eyes do Pac-Man and E.T. seem bad. I don't know how old you (the reader) were in 1981, but I can assure everyone who wasn't there (or old enough) that, in the case of both games, the reason they sold well had NOTHING to do with their quality and EVERYTHING to do with their anticipation. The waiting lists and lines for Pac-Man on the 2600 were unprecedented, but once kids got the game home, it was INSTANT disappointment, and THAT had a huge effect on willingness to buy games again and eagerness to play more on the Atari. It's not a quantifiable metric, but kids of the era know it to be true. As 2014's Atari Game Over documentary said of E.T., the anticipation from one of the biggest movies in the history of cinema created THAT disappointment. (Also, being stuck in pits wasn't unique to the 90s emulators, either; that was a flaw in the original.) And how many times can kids get burned before they choose to go ride bikes instead of play with their Atari?
Another inaccuracy in this video is the statement that all Atari games look nothing like their arcade counterparts, so we all knew what to expect when we brought one home. That's actually provably false. Just do a TH-cam search for ANY arcade versions of Atari's rollout games, and then find clips of their 2600 versions. Games like Night Driver, Space Invaders, Tank, Missile Command, and myriad others look almost IDENTICAL to their Atari counterparts. Sometimes, the Atari versions were arguably BETTER because they were in color (as opposed to the black and white games of the 70s and early 1980 that were black and white but had static colored laminates stuck to their glass cabinets). So when did they stop looking so close? Right around 1981. In fact, for many 80s kids, Pac-Man was the first time that this was illustrated. If you look at the "Class of '81" arcade games, they mark a technological jump from their predecessors. They are in color, they have better sound, and they have better resolution, all things Atari couldn't replicate. But an 80s kid wouldn't know that Atari wasn't going to be able to pull it off. To us, since their track record was so amazing for their first 3 years of conversions, why wouldn't the rest?
The bottom line is that Coleco and the 5200 DID pull that conversion off, but both were too cost prohibitive to middle and lower class 80s kids (the real reason for THEIR failure), and being stuck with a system that couldn't emulate the new technology made for a boring home gaming experience. So if you loved gaming, you were better off taking your budgeted money for 2600 cartridges and just spending it in an arcade... or maybe even on toys... or baseball cards... or a new bike. That's what every gamer in our town did. How about yours?
Paul Hewson
One last thing: retailer glut is being blamed in this video
without consideration for what CAUSED the glut. The retailers were stuck with
overstock because we no longer bought the games. Because we no longer had
interest in the games. Because the games were boring. Because the games no
longer looked or played like those in the arcade. This is also the real reason
why Nintendo save it all: superior graphics and playability at a price point
within reach of the middle class gamers. Retail glut may have put companies out of business, but inferior game quality put kids out of doors.
+Paul Hewson Have to agree on this one. I was 13 in 1981 and remember the Pac-Man mess on the 2600. It was laughable. It was a rushed port and it shows.
Did anyone even bother to look on the back of the box? There were other Atari 2600 commercials that didn't show the game in action.
Mr. W.E., the reason behind the retailer glut is because Atari wasn’t growing as fast as expected. Also, many people were fine with Pac Man being drastically different from the Arcade. The developer of the port wanted to make it different. If you knew about Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic, would you hate that Nintendo drastically changed the game to be Super Mario Bros. 2? Of course not. Lastly, the ColecoVision wasn’t that expensive, it was priced at $175 dollars ($450 in 2019) at launch, which isn’t expensive the Atari 5200 on the other hand was priced at $270 ($700 in 2019).
The Crash hit in the Spring of 1984 not '83. Its effects weren't felt until 1984.
Tornado1994 That's not exactly true. For instance, this InforWorld article describing Atari losses is from 1983. i.imgur.com/OtpzbBK.png
Atari's disastrous stock drop occurred on Dec 7, 1982. Though the ripple effects in the industry weren't felt until the next year.
Of course, these details, and others, are cited in the video.
ZadocPaet The fiscal wasn't over yet. The Crash hit in 1984 because the FY results of 1983 came in and caused the market collapse.
The marked began collapsing on Dec 7, 1982. It lost more than 50 percent of its value in 1983, and bottomed out in 1984. Ya, the floor was found in 1984, but the crash was in full motion in 83.
ZadocPaet The crash started in '83, but the full effects weren't felt until Spring 1984.It did not become apparent during mid 1983. Coleco Adam,Intellivision 2 all were released during the 1983 fiscal year. The 2600 also had big releases like Swordquest during that fiscal year.
December 1982-March 1984 is the 1983 fiscal year. (With December 1982 being the final part of the 1982 fiscal year.)
I'm sure that Atari, and then Mattel fell in panic and felt bleak of the market in 1983.
Just wanted to ask, didn't Atari produce 5 million E.T carts? Where did you find that it was only 2.5 million carts?
It was so long ago that I don't remember. I don't have the source list anymore. It looks today like closer to 5 million. Still, not the "more than the number of consoles" rumor. There were over 20 million in homes in 1982, and whatever the number, it was the number of retail orders.
Atari manufactured 5 million cartridges for the game ( wiki)
Finally, the missing piece to the puzzle about the video game crash of 1983. I've seen so many videos, and read lots of blogs and articles online that tried to explain it, and they all pointed to those three main myths you busted. Even if I were to combine them all together and say that put together they crashed the video game industry, it just wouldn't make sense.
Looking at the "golden age" of video games after the crash, I find all of those things present and yet the industry thrived. There where lots of crappy games and that didn't slow things down. There were a ton of consoles (most of which nobody heard of) and that didn't slow things down, PCs were more powerful than ever with their own games, and the list goes on. Basically, just about every "cause" for the crash was there in the golden age and it didn't matter so I couldn't accept it.
You're the only one to bring up the problem with the retailers. It created a no-win situation for Atari and the others. If the games sucked, they took a loss, if the games sold well, they took a loss because of the returns. Getting things to shift to where the retailers would take a loss for over ordering made a huge difference.
Since the Atari 2600 was out and everyone already had it, Atari just couldn't change the rules for retailers on the fly (don't know about legally, but it wouldn't have stopped gamers and developers from doing things as usual). I can definitely see that if only they had gotten their act together and released the 7800 with the policy change before the NES arrived (or actually if any manufacturer did it before NES), the industry would've recovered itself without needing something to come in from Japan and the games we grew up with would've been very different. We probably still would've gotten some Nintendo games since Nintendo WAS making games for other systems before they brought the NES to the US (kudos for pointing that out BTW), but most likely the mighty Mario wouldn't be the most recognizable video game character here in the US.
For those that say we're heading for another Video Game crash in the next 5-10 years, I would agree, but it certainly will not be the same as what crashed it in 1983.
I have several ideas for videos, and one of which would be retrospectively evaluating Nintendo's illegal business practices in the late '80s. A lot of rules they put on the table sticks out as an example of aggressive marketing and licensing control, which is understandable albeit quite over-the-top for a company that was just entering the console market at the time.
I think this is a good video, but some details are off and overall it could use some refining now that information on the crash has cleaned up a bit overtime. Based on my research, the video game crash happened for three critical reasons.
Retail Glut:
As you said, retail shops over-ordered copies of popular games, which lead to Atari and other companies hemorrhaging profit. It probably wouldn't have been a death sentence had it not been for what added to the problem.
Dysfunctional Retail System:
Shops returning copies if sales didn't meet expectations caused a lot of damage. Cartridges either had to be repurposed into other games, sold in bargain bins for low prices, or destroyed. Atari could take such a hit due to being such a huge company, but small and even decently sized game developers couldn't, and as such they fell apart quickly and had to restart business elsewhere.
Third-Party Developers:
It is true that only a handful of devs were able to get their games out to major retail. That said, Atari not seeing any profit from them ended up cutting into their profits heavily. In 1981, 70% of the money through Atari game sales went to them. In 1982, that dropped to 40%, and it played a critical part into the lower than expected profit increase Atari reported to Warner Communications. Through it all, most of the profit Atari saw was coming from their hardware, but hardware sales eventually start to slow down after a few years of massive popularity. The little profit they got from software, mixed with the other two critical factors for the crash, ultimately is what lead to Atari's demise. A demise that in retrospect was unfair and unpredictable due to how detrimentally young the video game industry was.
Those are what I'd say are the legit reasons for the crash. There were certainly other factors, but they were just small things that added to the core issues. It's an interesting story that practically no one stops talking about, and yet one that's misunderstood at worst and exaggerated at best. Nonetheless it's one I find entertaining whenever it's brought up.
Nintendo was god's gift to the gamers. So there were too many orders of Atari games, despite the bad and good quality ones, and that made people lose faith in video games until Nintendo released the NES.
Great vídeo. You have a new sub Sir.
Actually Sears sold the Sears tele games console it was a 2600 I had it
I played ET with a friend the day after Xmas, we knew then it sucked. It took an hour or two to sink in that it wasn't us that didn't didn't understand the game but that the game was just a nightmare.
A slightly easier terrible game is still a terrible game.... We were 2 kids on Christmas break reading manuals wasn't on the agenda.
Dude the game was garbage even for the time it was garbage, that's why it ended up.... in the garbage.
It was a game aimed at kids, you know the people would buy an ET game, and made to be a ridiculous mess where you would randomly fall into pits from off screen and do this over and over and over and over and over and over as if this was some kind of engaging game play. We were like 11-12 years old and trying to have fun at christmas with a kids game for kids, we had no idea at the time of how it was made in a short time by people who didn't give a shit about it or we could have skipped the whole disaster. How old are you were you around when this stuff came out or have you just read about it or something? I played damn near every game console that was around the late 70s including the Astrocade, Odyssey 2, Intellivision none of the games that I ever played on any of those consoles was the confusing shitty mess of this ET game.
Oh and as for Adventure that was a very different kind of game aimed at an older audience, it was interesting and made with a bit of love and care. We had FUN playing that, we had no fun with ET, no one else that I knew at the time who had played had any fun either, it was played for a day and put in a drawer and forgotten with good reason.
The game was no fun, manual or no manual, easy or hard dificulty... Popular opinion? We played it in 83, I never heard it mentioned again until Code Monkeys whenever that was. My point about the consoles is that it was possible to make a good game back then without randomly falling into holes in the ground. Somewhere there's a guy whos favorite car was the Ford Pinto, doesn't mean it was a good car.
Yes of course it's not that it was a half assed cash grab of a game made by people who didn't care, it's that I wasn't sophisticated enough to appreciate it's artistry... Fuck off ya wordy troll.
I don't think Pac-Man was the cause of the crash, but as an eye-witness to the era I can honestly say that many of us really did hate it when it came out.
Good vid.
I agree. There was wayyy too much inventory. I remember during the 80's there were these huge bins of Atari 2600 games. Buy 3 for $10.
I remember talking to the store staff during that time. The said they would get a ton of returns. And there was nothing wrong with the game
It was too easy back then to return games.
I asked what happens to the games? They said they just send them all back to shipper.
So I guess the shipper would send all the returned games to the Alamogordo, NM landfill 🤣
May I ask, are you still proud of this video or do you think you could have made a few changes here and there?
Good question. There is a lot of new info. The E.T. documentary really rendered a lot of this info redundant. I've also grown a lot as a video editor and have way better equipment today.
One thing that left me scratching my head was this. Was it Atari, retailers or both that predicted Pac-Man to sell 12 million copies on the Atari 2600?
@@ultrairrelevantnobody1862 Atari relied on retail orders for their internal data.
Great video, for once somebody on You Tube knows their facts!
It sold 1 million units in the USA, but in Europe it was more popular than the VCS
Atari 2600 Pac-Man was garbage even back then. Bad colors, stupid looking Pac-Man, bad sound, same maze every time. It definitely made me lose faith in the Atari brand.
E.T. looked and sounded good, but was too complicated and boring for the age range it was targeting. I was nine. I wasn't about to read instructions or have the patience to search in a bunch of holes for whatever.
Games like Pitfall kept us young Atari owners going until the Colecovision kicked the 2600 into the ground.
The sound is the worst part of the game.
"but was too complicated and boring for the age range it was targeting"
Essentially implying that children are too stupid to read manuals.
Of course, if they tried to have Wii U compatible with XBOX One and PS4, there would be lawsuits up the wazoo.
Jaguar is not pronounced "jag-wire". It's "jag-war", or if you're British, "jag-U-R".
No one cares how you pronounce it,just because he pronounces something different doesn't prove him wrong
WORST is FIREFLY it looks like a half programmed MESS
Boy, were retailers ever dumb in the early 1980s ordering all those games..
Well to be fair, no other industry rose as fast so they figured those high sales would last forever. They found out in a hurry that nothing lasts forever. The same thing happened with the Dot Com bubble in the late 1990 and early 2000's.
Cause Video Game marketing is rather new for them in…the early 80s.
Curious - from the clues of this history - how is game industry health today? Or would this be an apples to oranges comparison...
Good video with good points, but some problems. There weren't 20 million VCS by 1982, maybe 8 million lifetime total a that point. And Ray Kassar said he shipped 4 million units of ET, not 2.5 million- so that was a lot to come back. Analysis still good. Can't blame the crash on two games when there were a dozen factors. Also, not really true about the 2600 pac man either- emulators can play it pretty accurately, and if you look at the 2600 version of Ms. Pac Man, you'll see a vast improvement with no flicker- proving a better translation was possible on the system.
I agree that emulators can handle it today. But check out the Rerez video on Pac--man (finding positives) It's a mess. And people sell that experience as the actual experience (as Rerez did in his video).
I also agree about the units of Pac-Man shipped. I have a lot better info today than I did back when I made this.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment.
@@RetroGameLivingRoom The big difference was I think that that Pac man for the 2600 was only 2K, whereas Ms. Pac Man was 4K. Atari was too cheap to allot more than 2K for Pac man, but Ms. Pac Man was made by an outside company and they used 4K of memory. So, it's far more accurate. Again, cool video. Thanks for taking the time to do it.
My opinion is that the Atari 2600 by the time of the crash reached the end of its life cycle and there was no other console to replace it.
Atari was planning to release the 7800 in 1984.
But Mattel could have released the Intellivision III.
Good video and good points on Video game crash of 1983. I agree that your opinion on the main cause of the crash was retail glut, However I also consider the other main cause of the crash was the VG industry became over saturated with products both good and bad products. As like you said, Good Atari 2600 games can also cause financial losses for a developer.
+sicnarfkcin The Crash hit in Spring 1984.
true
No, you are wrong, the Wii and DS had an over-saturated market.
I was a kid at the time I was 10 in 1984.
Retro Game Living Room, an Intellivision III was in development at the time, but it was never realeased. It was going to be released in mid 1983 and was more powerful than the most popular computer on the market, the Commodore 64.
Also an Intellivision IV was in early development and was comparable to the Genesis
Therefore Mattel could have saved the industry if they launched the Intellivision III
Agreed.
Also, the Intellivision had an extra slot to use extra add-ons like the System Changer which could play VCS games.
Also consoles stagnated and Microcomputers were getting better and better. Look at how popular BlackBerry was and every other cellphone looked exactly like it. The iPhone came out and changed the trend. Alot of cell phone manufacters bowed out because, They looked as having inferior models. There are fewer Cell Phone manufacters than there were them. And before that, there were alot of manufacterers of Flip Phones. Blackberry set the trend and some cellphone companies went down in fire before that.
Atari could have been better if Their The American Distributor for the Famicom.
I always believed the ET and Pac-Man caused the crash in 83 with the fabked atari dump site myth
Have you seen Atari: Game Over? It's on a lot of streaming platforms. It covers the dump and the crash quite well.
@@RetroGameLivingRoom no I have been wanting to see it
@@ProfessorRetro1976 it's not very long!
@Dusk Raccoon pretty much so plus all the returns they got from returned and unsold stock
5:40ish area, what's he talking out of? But yea, people just don't get that earnings and Atari infighting killed it. Too bad no one will believe it till AVGN finishes his moving and claims ET isn't that bad of a game, then everyone pretends to have always loved it.
If you plan on doing a new video or follow up, maybe make mention of how the landfill was an over exaggeration, I'm sick of people claiming it was confirmed. These people should be tossed in a blocky pit they keep falling back into.
I know this is so crazy thinking who the heck wants to create such silly games so absurd.
I am from the 80s. Atari PacMan was bad but we played it anyway. I had an Odyssey2 and loved KC Munchkin. I still have my Atari ET cartridge. I had coleco vision too but stopped using it around 1984. I used my Commodore 64 the most in the mid to late 80s. I never bought the NES. I was on Amiga at the time it was popular.
padistedor, Atari Pac Man is too different from the original. That would be like people hating Super Mario Bros 2 (USA) for not being Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic.
Jesus loves you! :)
I remember the Emerson one: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcadia_2001
In fact, I had one. It was OK, but not much of a selection of games, and it didn't last long.
No, we hated E.T. when we played it in 1983, too. With the instructions.
10 years old already lol
15:35 star fox?
Not the same as the one you're thinking of. :)
Not how I remember it lol. But hey, what is reality versus a TH-cam video 😑 they sold Video Games at Sav-on Drugstore in SoCal. Also, Sav-On had a return policy 😉
To say that "most" enjoyed Atari PacMan in the early 80s is a false statement. What they enjoyed was Ms Pac Man, a much better gsme! The port of Pac Man was considered terrible then and terrible now!
I'll watch later
I Played both E.T. & Pac Man when they came out. Both were bad but E.T. was by far the worst. It's reputation as a horrible game is well deserved. I had many friends who played both games. I don't know anyone who liked either game. This reputation didn't come from 90s Emulators. Stores were flooded with refund requests. Your assumption is wrong on both counts.
YEP, YEP, YEP!!!
If it was "retailer glut" then how come they were hesitant to deal with games again in the future? If "retailer glut" was the case, they could simply order less quantities.
Blame Nintendo.
I remember my parents were on a list for 6 months to get Pac-Man on release date for the 2600 at Sears. When we finally got it home, I was disappointed. Horribly disappointed. Everyone I knew that bought the game hated it. It's no myth. And considering how much better Ms Pac-Man was the next year on the 2600, and only sold 1.5 million copies, shows that people were over Atari. The original Pac-Man port could have been much better It was rushed
We all know monster house by atari SUCKS
My dad was born in 1971 he got et the day it came out and he atests that the game was terrible and a disapointment.
Then how come the Atari employees confirm that the reasons for the crash was video game over saturation and loads of bad games? (By the way, nobody said it was just two games.). And why was Nintendo was so cautious about that possibility of happening again that they created the lockout chip? And also why did Nintendo go out of its way to create R.O.B. the Robot to make the NES more like a toy and have the cartridges insert in the front like a VCR to make the NES look less like a video game console so stores would be willing to carry it? I could go on... Your theory doesn’t add up.
dumb
@@josephluke5842 It's dumb to reply with just the word "dumb". At least elaborate on your response. Not to mention this guy is the only source anywhere that states this. Atari also mentioned loss of publishing control in many interviews. I also have yet to see him explain the Nintendo Seal of Quality other than just mildly state that they were trying to "control" what was available. Actually all systems locked out unauthorized games since Nintendo did, even the Sega Master System. It might be easier to believe him if anyone else online stated the same thing or if he posted sources.
Where’s your sources that Atari employees confirm it was bad games that ruined the market
@@Korvinian4601The movie Atari: Game Over, Howard Scott Warshaw, and Nolan Bushnell to name a few as well as many of the interviews on G4 Icons about the crash. Lots of other sources that include Atari and Intellivision employees as well.
@@Korvinian4601Also, you fail to acknowledge any point I made and neither did the guy who replied with just the word "dumb" who I see has since deleted that post. At least I posted the inconsistencies in the video's argument.
Nice video but I was there in the ‘80’s too. I remember the whole E.T. And PAC-Man thing. Those games were terrible.
Dude, NOBODY stated that only two games caused the crash.
What are you talking about? So many think that exactly.
@@Tallahassee21Not really, they blame it on quite a bit of factors if you actually listen. They also blame it on an oversaturation of games, especially bad games, not just two.
@@MisterE80 never thought you would respond 😂. The thing is though that many a documentary will go out of their way to regurgitate that they made so many copies of the both Pac-Man and ET that they were overstocked and so many people disliked that and it's what "started the demise of the vg market in North America.
This one was the first to essentially put everything in perspective in relation to where the market was in the boom of the console market. If you were a gamer in the 2000s with the rise of magazines and techtv/g4, the stories told reflected that misinformation to a t.
@@Tallahassee21 I've seen interviews with Atari employees confirm that an oversaturation of the market was a big factor in the crash.
@@Tallahassee21 Nolan Bushnell and Howard Lincoln have confirmed that an oversaturation of the market was one of the big factors of the crash.
I was onboard with this show until we got to Pac-Man and E.T.
I still clearly remember the great disappointment how bad Pac-Man looked. No, we didn't know what we were really getting before we purchased it.
And no kid at school regarded E.T. as just 'mediocre'. We all thought it sucked bad. We were just little children then but felt so defrauded without having a strong vocabulary to express that to local news field correspondants.
Pac-Man: Did you check the back of the box?
E.T: Did you read the manual?
@@fictionalmediabully9830 this smells a lot like when the customer makes a decision based on the loud & proud marketing messages by a merchant and then, when feeling their trust betrayed by the realization of the actual product, the merchant's legal team rhetorically asks "did you not pause the TV commercial and read the tiny font disclaimer paragraph that flashed at the bottom of the screen for a fleeting moment?"
@@User-z3d
And said commerical, at least the ones in both the UK and US, showed the actual game being played on TV. Enough information to properly inform the customer the content.
Uh, no, it's not ingrained in video game culture that the crash happened because of just two video games.
E T video game woke people up. People where getting burned with trash video games.
Cool video, but no, et sucked in 1983 also haha
I disagree
explain
Matt Collins the game was so bad that people threw every copy they could fund in a landfill also Nintendo had to market the nes as a toy to get it to sell
Pac man was glitchy as hell ( Miss Pac-man not covered here), almost epileptic game. You're not a real player cuse Playing the original Pac-Man and the Crap Atari released are two worlds. Peeps were NOT happy with that release and For E.T. ( 5 millions is not 2.5 millions sir),The game was sold for young kids and the gameplay (pace,complexity) was NOT ideal for them.... and the parents returned the game for their money back. So after 2 christmas in a row, 2 awesome big flops!. But yeah, Nintendo "seal of quality" policy realy help the industry from this overcrowded crappy game era. And I bought a home computer back then cuse I knew it was better at any of the consoles of that era.